My selection is one many young adults at the time took as an anthem; it was a very real every day concern then, and that concern does seem to be back with us now, though maybe people aren’t as concerned as before. There is good reason for concern, and for de-proliferation, and peace.
And now, the music. I’m putting both the German version (best one!) and the English language version, which is also just fine to dance to. “You can’t dance and stay uptight.”
This is what happens when a war criminal like Netanyahu goes on an ethic cleansing spree with the backing of an American dictator and Republican evangelicals.
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The election may be over in New York City, but Mayor Eric Adams isn’t done fighting against Zohran Mamdani.
In the last two weeks, Adams has made – or flirted with – maneuvers that could cause some political headaches for mayor-elect Mamdani and even stall his affordability agenda. The moves have implications for Mamdani’s pledge to freeze the rent for stabilized tenants, maintain funding for the NYPD and build more housing to address the city’s affordability crisis.
Political experts say Adams is following a tried and true tradition.
“There’s a history of mayors making decisions in the final days of their mayoralty,” said Chris Coffey, a political strategist who worked for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Whether it’s for messing with the next mayor, or getting the things they want before their term is up, only a psychiatrist could tell you.”
Late last month, Adams began weighing whether to pack the Rent Guidelines Board with members opposed to Mamdani’s plan to freeze the rent on the city’s 1 million regulated apartments. Those appointees would remain in place when Mamdani took office, potentially setting up an unprecedented legal battle over whether the new mayor could fire them.
Adams has not yet announced any new appointees. Eleonora Srugo, a real estate agent and star of a Netflix reality show, “Selling the City,” told the New York Times she had declined Adams’ job offer.
Days later, Adams announced additional funding to hire 5,000 police officers. Mamdani has said he would keep the police headcount at its current level of 35,000 officers — a headcount the NYPD has failed to reach under Adams due to struggles with recruitment.
Once Mamdani takes office, he will have to decide whether to rescind the $316 million Adams allocated to hire the additional officers. The move would be largely symbolic since the city can’t meet its currently budgeted staffing levels.
During the primary, Mamdani distanced himself from his previous calls to reduce police spending.
“I am not defunding the police. I am not running to defund the police,” he said in July. He described himself as a person who “learns and one that leads, and part of that means admitting as I have grown.”
The latest example of Adams’ maneuvering came on Wednesday, when Gothamist exclusively reported that the administration had designated Elizabeth Street Garden as parkland. The move was the latest development in the years-long saga over whether the city could build an affordable housing development for seniors on the site in Nolita.
Mayor Adams has said he’s committed to a smooth transition. But he’s implemented policies that go against Zohran Mamdani’s agenda.
Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office
On Thursday, Mamdani accused Adams of “using his final weeks and months to cement a legacy of dysfunction and inconsistency.”
But he also said that the administration’s actions “make it nearly impossible to follow through with” building housing on the garden.
Adams is far from the first mayor to complicate his successor’s plans.
Former Mayor David Dinkins ignored his successor Rudy Giuliani’s criticisms of a deal to keep the U.S. Open in Queens by building Arthur Ashe Stadium.
During the final month of his second term, Giuliani, a baseball fan, signed deals for new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees. Bloomberg canceled them not long after he took over City Hall.
Adams has publicly said he’d ensure a smooth transition. On Thursday, he rejected Mamdani’s criticism of his move to preserve Elizabeth Street Garden.
“It’s not about a legacy of dysfunction,” Adams told reporters. “It’s about protecting a legacy in the promises we made.”
He also said, “I’m the mayor until December 31st.”
With the Elizabeth Street Garden, Adams may have actually done Mamdani a favor. The proposed development has devolved into a nasty fight pitting housing advocates against the garden’s well-heeled supporters, who include Patti Smith, Robert DeNiro, Martin Scorsese and others.
“These are political sh– sandwiches,” Coffey said, referring to the garden. “I’m sure the mayor- elect would want that off the table.”
During a live podcast with the news site Hell Gate last month, Mamdani said he would evict the garden’s operators in his first year as mayor. But at least one key member of his inner circle may be pleased with Adams’ move to make the Elizabeth Street Garden a park — filmmaker Mira Nair.
“My mother really disagrees with me,” Mamdani said.
The president of Boston University College Republicans wrote on X he called the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requesting it detain employees at Allston Car Wash, the site of a Nov. 4 raid where nine employees were arrested.
Boston University College Republicans President Zac Segal being interviewed at a club meeting. Segal posted on X that he called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to investigate the Allston Car Wash that was raided last week. (AVA RUBIN)
“I’ve been calling ICE for months on end. This week they finally responded to my request to detain these criminals,” BUCR President Zac Segal posted Nov. 7 above a Boston.com article about the ICE raid.
Segal declined to comment Thursday morning.
“As someone who lives in the neighborhood, I’ve seen how American jobs are being given away to those with no right to be here. Pump up the numbers!” Segal’s post concludes.
BUCR did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.
The nine detained employees all had work permits, Allston Car Wash Manager Jose Barrera told Boston.com.
Barrera said around 22 federal agents arrived at the Cambridge Street car wash holding subpoenas, but agents began arresting employees before they could retrieve their documents from the locker room, Barrera told Boston.com.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.
This is a developing story and will be updated with more information.
Please notice she had documentation on her and was known to the jail personnel. ICE doesn’t care about a person’s documentation nor did the jail people, they seem to be racists who want brown people out of the US at any costs. Hugs
ICE is engaging in illegal Gestapo tactics based on the egregiously unconstitutional executive orders from the convicted felon and puppet of war criminal Vladimir Putin. These violent and fascist thugs must be abolished and their obscene funding reallocated to America’s crumbling infrastructure and woefully underfunded social services. These two areas of resource redirection would significantly improve the quality of life for millions of Americans, unlike the GOP’s incessant assaults upon our republic!
U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attend a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 9, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Something dramatic has happened.
Many people who consider themselves non-political or independent, or moderate Republican, or who even voted for Trump last November, can’t avoid seeing what’s now come so clearly into the open.
They’ve watched Trump order the Texas National Guard into Portland and Chicago, over the objections of the mayors of those cities and the governors of Oregon and Illinois. They’ve heard him call for jailing the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois for opposing these moves.
They’ve heard him threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops all over America.
They’ve watched Trump’s ICE agents drag people out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip-tie them and their children, and haul them away.
They’ve seen Trump’s prosecutors indict the attorney general of New York state because she held Trump accountable for fraud. And seen him threaten to do the same to a California senator because he conducted hearings in the House exposing Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol.
They’ve heard Trump say he can kill anyone who he claims is an enemy combatant trafficking drugs.
They’ve heard Trump direct the IRS, FBI, and Justice Department against liberal groups that oppose him — George Soros’s Open Society Foundation; ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising organization; Indivisible, the community-based resistance organization.
And they watched him take off the air comedians who criticize him — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel.
All across America, millions of people who have avoided politics, or identified as independents or moderate Republicans or even Trump voters, are shaken by what they’re seeing and hearing.
It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican or left versus right.
It’s now democracy versus dictatorship. Right versus wrong.
It’s no longer a war on undocumented immigrants. It’s now a war on Americans.
It’s no longer a foreign enemy. It’s now the “enemy within.”
Across the land, average Americans are realizing that they too could be dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night by Trump’s ICE agents, or tear-gassed and arrested by Trump’s National Guard, or targeted by Trump’s prosecutors, or shot by Trump’s military.
The Big Reveal is that all of us are now endangered.
Multiple polls show Trump’s approval tanking, but I think it runs deeper than this.
Something dramatic has happened over the last two weeks — as America sees more vividly than ever who Trump is, where he and his trio of lapdogs (Miller, Vought, and Vance) want to take the country, and how we’re all potential targets.
The Big Reveal is impossible not to see. Trump and his lapdogs are doing all of this completely in the open. They have no shame.
Most Americans abhor what they see, because what they see is abhorrent.
This is how the great sleeping giant of America awakens, roars, and puts an end to it.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
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